


Swing Low, Sail High

by Raven (singlecrow)



Category: Parks and Recreation, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Gen, New Vulcan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-18
Updated: 2013-10-18
Packaged: 2017-12-29 17:41:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1008219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/pseuds/Raven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're making a documentary about the New Vulcan Department of Parks and Recreation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Swing Low, Sail High

Of course Ron doesn’t think it's good news. But Ron never thinks anything is good news, and Leslie has been trying to arrange this all the ten days (local time; Leslie is going to be on local time if it will take eighteen cups of a coffee a day to do it) they've been on-planet. "People need to have fun, Ron!" she insists. "I mean I know there's no issue with lots of public spaces, but they could stand to be more fun. And there's also classes, and swing-sets, and stuff. You know. Recreation."

"Recreation," Ron repeats, with no inflection.

"Recreation." Leslie is looking for a binder and checking her notes. The surface of the table stops pretending to be made of Earth oak and starts scrolling statistics. "Computer, opinion data. Thanks. And I get that the problem is that, and by we I don't mean you and me, Ron, I mean basically the entire human race, we don't know how Vulcans…. uh, recreate. This public forum will be astonishingly valuable in helping us know what our stakeholders want! We can better serve their needs!"

"Stakeholders," Ron says.

"And more good news!" Leslie puts down her binder and looks for her emergency kit to sling around her neck. New Vulcan air is breathable, but tiring. "The USS _Navratri_ has just made orbit."

"Orbit," Ron says, then: "Why is that good news?" 

And this time he sounds like he's asking why that in particular is good news rather than why anything could be good news, ever, so she gets down Ron's rebreather kit so he can come with her and be moral support if not, for example, helpful, and says, "So you know the Vulcan High Council wanted us to have an overseer, and I called to ask and it's morning ship's time so I thought maybe he could come with us to the public forum and…"

"Leslie, for God's sake," Ron says, but his heart's not in it.

*

_[Leslie, still holding the binders, fiddling with the breathing tube.]_

"So self-determination is so important! But when your whole planet gets destroyed – and that, that sucks so much – leaving behind only ten thousand people, it's not like they're demographically selected? And they didn't have any people who knew much about… open spaces. Not like they're going to need, for building the new capital. I mean they had a lot of engineers and healers. Like Ann! Beautiful Ann. So we’re here. For a while. Not forever, because self-determination. Yeah."

*

The overseer's name is Ben Wyatt. He has hair that sticks up and a kind of bemused expression and black eyes that are a little alarming in his pale face, and Leslie was sort of lying to Ron and sort of not, in that it was morning, ship's time, on the _Navratri_ , but kind of like, four in the morning, but Ben smiles at them both and says it's fine, he doesn't mind coming to the public forum. They set off down the main street to the new public chamber, and Leslie offers to go back to get Ben another emergency rebreather kit but he declines. "New Vulcan is actually pretty close to physiological normal, for me," he says, and then adds, "Are the modifications, uh, standard?"

Ron looks outraged. "You think I'll let my people out with _government-issue_ life-saving equipment" – and they've arrived. 

They all fall silent as they go inside – the local architecture tends to have that effect on people – and the guy in the anteroom nods and says, formally, "Mr. Swanson, Ms. Knope, Overseer Wyatt", and then they go inside and Ben says, "Ah. Ah, ah, ah" – and there's this great rising roar of people all getting to their feet at once, and then they're at the front of the room behind the panel table, looking out over the crowd, and somehow Leslie's not surprised that Vulcans attend public fora in great and intimidating numbers but she has never addressed this many people in her life. And next to her Ben is still going, "Ah, ah, ah" and Ron is saying, "Are you _screaming politely_?" and Ben grabs Leslie's hand and says, "Ah, Leslie, you don't happen to have a sedative hypospray on you" and Ron reaches down to pick up part of the rebreather kit, the small, solid tank of compressed gas, and brings it down with a thunk on Ben's head.

He slumps over the table, the roar gets somehow even louder and that's the Parks Department's public debut.

*

_[Ben, clutching his head, talking to the floor]_

"So the Vulcan High Council were thankful for the assistance from Federation terraforming engineers, and also other public servants such as the Parks Department. But they stipulated some degree of oversight from, ah, um. People who understood them. I'm about a quarter Human and the rest is Betazoid and Vulcan. I am a – oww – touch and broadcast telepath. I'm here partly in my capacity as a trained auditor to oversee the rebuilding budget and partly to help the Parks Department to understand Vulcan accessibility needs. 

"Of course I can tell what you're thinking. Asshole."

*

"Okay," Leslie is saying, as they're running, "that was um, a lot of anger." It's only about five hundred yards to the Parks Department but the air is feeling kind of dry and the ground very hard beneath her feet. She stumbles, Ron steadies her and they keep going. Inside her office – which is not actually an office, it's a cave, but not as bad as that makes it sound, it's got open space in the middle with clear sightlines to the other offices, uh, caves, it's cool and easy to breathe and it's not that far away now if they just keep going and isn't comparative xenoarchitecture fascinating and oh God, she's going to die.

"Ron," Ben is saying, "is it that you don't trust the government to be giving you oxygen, or that you don't want to be taking oxygen from the government? Actually, don't tell me, I don't care." 

He looks in decent shape for someone who was unconscious literally five minutes ago. It's that physiological thing. "Really, really angry," Leslie says in wonderment, looking at her feet as from a great distance. She's feeling okay. Like she's floating up into the clouds. Leslie likes clouds. They're like whipped cream and marshmallow pillows. New Vulcan doesn't really have clouds. The air is so thin. 

"Yes," Ben says, through gritted teeth, "imagine the fifty loudest people you know having a shouting match _inside your head_."

"Oh! Oh, that's why Ron…"

"Yes!" Ben waves a frustrated hand. "Are they following us? Is anyone following us? Ron – "

Ron screeches to a halt, holds the doorway – "Go, go, go!" – and they all three collapse into the hallway, and Councilwoman T'Pel looks at them from her spot by the front desk with an expression of disapproval.

"Are you… government employees?"

"Yes" – proudly, regretfully, painfully. They walk back to Parks and Rec with dignity.

*

_[Ron, very calm, with hands in his pockets, underneath a sign that reads: "UNFEDERATE YOUR LIFE"]_

"Apparently, consent is not a defence to assault in Vulcan law."

_[Ben, briefly in shot, still clutching his head]_

"Luckily, Ben has decided not to press charges."

*

The others have been out in the city with one of Leslie's almost-patented, three-dimensional to-do lists, with the colour coding and soothing textures. "So there's the new shuttle landing strip just outside of town," Tom is saying as he comes in, counting off on his fingers, "and something about new bedding plants for the town square, something something something Earth seed banks, how come you can get seeds sent here from Earth but you can't get, like, cufflinks, and oh my God, what the hell."

Leslie lifts her head from the centre table for a moment. "Donna, Tom, Jerry," she says, "this is Ben Wyatt, he's our new Vulcan overseer. Ben, these are Donna, Tom and Jerry."

"Hi," Ben says, to the ceiling. He's half lying in his chair, holding an ice pack with the tips of his fingers.

"Okay," Donna says, "am I missing something? Because I'm sure I didn't have a… migraine? When I came in here. Is it a migraine? Oh my God, someone threw up in my head."

"It's… angrier than a migraine," Leslie says faintly. "More… little guys, inside your head, with boots."

"Would it be out of line," Jerry says tentatively, "to ask what's happening, here?"

"Jerry, for God's sake, isn't it obvious?" Leslie waves a hand. "Ben is a broadcast telepath and Ron hit him on the head really hard with an oxygen tank."

"Right," Jerry says. 

"Son," Ron says, advancing on Ben, "I have nothing against you personally. Will it stop if I hit you again?"

No one does any more work.

*

_[Leslie in her office, stepping towards the camera, her voice lowered confidentially.]_

"The telepathy thing."

_[beat]_

"It's kind of… weird. Am I allowed to say that? I mean I know they're not supposed to read your mind without your permission. But it's still… weird."

_[camera shifts focus to Ben in the doorway, saying, "Leslie, I can hear you."]_

"Yeah… like that, you know?" 

_[Ben: "Because you said that out loud!"]_

"Okay. Sorry. I take it back."

*

And then April comes in, striding across the open space with basically more determination than Leslie's ever seen in her, stops approximately halfway between her and Ben and declaims something guttural and complicated. It's Vulcan Standard, which April only uses when she's seriously pissed. She stamps her foot, spits, spins on her heel and strides out.

"One of our adoring public?" Ben says, and sighs.

"What?" Leslie shakes her head. "That's April, she works here. Was she there, before? Did you see her?"

"Heard her, in a manner of speaking," Ben says. "She's really fluent in the language, isn't she? Though that's kind of a… rich pre-Reformation vocabulary."

"April's mom is Vulcan," Leslie says. "And, hey, actually…" She gets up and walks over to their front counter. "Hey, T'Rhetta. Were you looking for April? You just missed her."

T'Rhetta, April's coolly beautiful mother, looks at her for a long, chilly moment. "April is waiting for me outside. She has no desire to remain in the employment of this department."

"What?" Leslie says. "Ron, get out here now. April's resigning?"

"Our world burned," T'Rhetta says, "and you speak of trivialities. Our world burned, and you come from Earth and you speak of _swing sets._ "

Leslie doesn't say anything.

*

_[Leslie, Ben and Ron, in Leslie's office, all quiet for a few moments, then:]_

"Shit."

*

The morning of the second public forum, Ann comes round to the Parks Department first thing and tells Ben he needs to sit down and sit still and stop being a giant baby, and then she injects something into his neck which makes him slur his words and walk into walls a couple of times, but he makes it into the room and he's awake and quiet. They've all come along this time, Ron, Donna, Jerry and Tom, trooping in quietly behind. April and her mom are sitting in the front row.

"Ladies, gentlemen and honoured others," Leslie says, and in the room the susurrus fades.

"I acknowledge and respect your anger. I don't understand it. I can't" – she pauses, and falters – "I don't know what it's like to have your planet destroyed. I never will. I wish I could understand, but I know you would never wish that understanding for me. I grieve with thee.

"New Vulcan needs terraformers, healers, engineers. It needs political scientists, economists, teachers and scholars. The Federation has provided all of these, and training and education and supplies so it can grow its own. I won't tell you it needs dance classes, language classes, art classes. I won't tell you it needs swing sets for children or ice-cream stands or quiet places with trees and sunshades.

"But if you decide you do want, or need, any of those things – or a hundred things like them – then we will be here. Thank you. Mene sakkhet ur-seveh."

And, okay, part of her was hoping for applause. But she gets that that's not how things really work. Instead there's a kind of heavy silence, like a lot of people are thinking very hard, and then someone raises their hand in the back row. Leslie pauses; Ron says, "Go on, sir."

"Thank you, Mr Swanson." He stands up. He's wearing the desert robes a lot of guys here wear and they swoosh gently around him as he moves. "Thank you, Ms. Knope. At one time" – he hesitates – "I lived in the city of Shi'Kahr. In the town square I recall there were open-air tables, with benches, and the pieces and boards for three-dimensional chess. Perhaps…"

"Of course," Leslie says, "of course. Come and see me about it after."

He doesn't smile, but he bows his head seriously and sits down.

And after that some other people stand up and ask more questions, and there's someone who wants to talk about botanical diversity in the area and someone else who wants to suggest open-air drinking fountains, and it's okay. It's okay. Leslie risks a glance into the front row and April gives her a tentative, tiny smile.

Afterwards, when they're heading out into the open air and there's a buzz of conversation as the audience start getting up, Ben turns to Leslie and says, "That was very impressive."

"What in particular?" she asks him, smiling.

"Mene sakkhet ur-seveh – how did you…" He stops. "Right. Evening classes."

"Evening classes." Leslie smiles at him. Ben smiles fondly back, and walks into a wall.


End file.
